As for living, you shall have your choice.  Indeed you shall live anywhere you please at Timbuctoo if you like it.  I don’t want to give up Plaistow, because my father and grandfather farmed the land themselves; but I am quite prepared not to live here.  I don’t think it would suit you, because it has so much of the farm-house about it.  Only I should like you sometimes to come and look at the old place.  What I should like would be to pull down the house at Belton and build another.  But you mustn’t propose to put it off till that’s done, as I should never have the heart to do it.  If you think that would suit you, I’ll make up my mind to live at Belton for a constancy; and then I’d go in for a lot of cattle, and don’t doubt I’d make a fortune.  I’m almost sick of looking at the straight ridges in the big square fields every day of my life.

Give my love to Mary.  I hope she fights my battle for me.  Pray think of all this, and relent if you can.  I do so long to have an end of this purgatory.  If there was any use, I wouldn’t say a word; but there’s no good in being tortured, when there is no use.  God bless you, dearest love.  I do love you so well!

Yours most affectionately,

W. Belton.’

She kissed the letter twice, pressed it to her bosom, and then sat silent for half an hour thinking of it of it, and the man who wrote it, and of the man who had written the other letter.  She could not but remember how that other man had thought to treat her, when it was his intention and her intention that they two should join their lots together how cold he had been; how full of caution and counsel; how he had preached to her himself and threatened her with the preaching of his mother; how manifestly he had purposed to make her life a sacrifice to his life; how he had premeditated her incarceration at Perivale, while he should be living a bachelor’s life in London!  Will Belton’s ideas of married life were very different.  Only come to me at once now, immediately, and everything else shall be disposed just as you please.  This was his offer.  What he proposed to give or rather his willingness to be thus generous, was very sweet to her; but it was not half so sweet as his impatience in demanding his reward.  How she doted on him because he considered his present state to be a purgatory!  How could she refuse anything she could give to one who desired her gifts so strongly?

As for her future residence, it would be a matter of indifference to her where she should live, so long as she might live with him; but for him she felt that but one spot in the world was fit for him.  He was Belton of Belton, and it would not be becoming that he should live elsewhere.  Of course she would go with him to Plaistow Hall as often as he might wish it; but Belton Castle should be his permanent resting-place.  It would be her duty to be proud for him, and therefore, for his sake, she would beg that their home might be in Somersetshire.